#i cannot emphasize enough how much autism was going on in those reviews for each ep they were long as fuck and progressively longer as we

[cloneslugs]

prefacing w the fact that like yeah the quality is superb, some of the strongest lore/narrative stuff (specifically for monarch crew), i understand why people love them (esp s6) but like. so telling me and emil do not care for them at all . our last rewatch we wrote a review for every episode as we watched and even the like. nothing or even bad eps it was like yeah heres something to say but s6 it was immediately like. yeah i do not care enough to write anything anymore

[turbomun]

Ghost Boy revamp -- all alterations & changes

I’ve had a few commenters mention that they’re wondering what, specifically, changed between the current and former versions of Ghost Boy; they could tell that it was different but weren’t sure how. Well, wonder no more, because I’m about to tell you exactly what I did and why!

CHARACTERIZATION

Turbo His personality is more or less the same as it was in the original, but I pushed one element a little further. It’s no secret that I relate to Turbo the most out of all the WIR characters, so back in 2012, I applied a lot of my own experiences towards my portrayal of him (“hmm, I engage in attention-seeking behaviors for X reason, maybe Turbo also engages in attention-seeking behaviors for X reason”). However, in 2012, I had not yet been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, which I later discovered was actually a huge part of my personality. IMO, you could definitely make a case for Turbo being autistic-coded in the original Ghost Boy, but I definitely made it more overt in the new version. This has the additional benefit of making it clear that, pre-RoadBlasters, he was mainly teased for his behavior and not his appearance. (In the original, it was supposed to be more like he thought he was being made fun of for the way he looked, and only later figured out that it was more because of the way he acted, but I’m not sure how clear that was.)

Vanellope She was definitely always the biggest characterization casualty in the first version of the fic -- way too cutesy, cried too much, didn’t stand up for herself nearly often enough. I’m going to partially excuse this by mentioning that 1) Ghost Boy was originally based on a roleplay and roleplays tend to have a lot of wangst in them because it’s more fun that way, and 2) the movie had literally just come out in theatres and I hadn’t watched it 999999999 times to get a better handle on how all of the characters acted. But make no mistake, the way I wrote her has been bothering me for ages. In the end, this wasn’t a difficult fix; all I had to do was add her to some scenes where she was absent before, replace most of the being afraid and/or crying scenes with more courageous behavior, and make it unambiguously her decision to reset Turbo. Having a better grasp on her dialogue and mannerisms also helped.

King Candy Mostly I felt that he was a bit too “generic evil” in his appearances. Obviously I wanted him to be threatening, but in the original Ghost Boy, he didn’t have a lot of the traits that made King Candy such an eerie and charming villain in the first place. I have to give a big shout-out to my former RP partner @thekingofkarts for giving me a model of how to write him better, ESPECIALLY his dialogue. Also, I emphasized his canonical tendency to try manipulation tactics before resorting to violence; yes, he’s a little more maniacal than his film counterpart due to being malware, but he at least makes an attempt to achieve his goals with the minimum amount of physical force, mostly in chapter 12 when he tries smooth-talking Turbo to get him out of the way.

Other characters I swapped out or edited certain lines of dialogue to make sure that everyone sounded like themselves. There are various other minor edits that come from seeing the movie about 200 times and being much more familiar with each character’s personality.

STORY

Removal of confusing, unnecessary details As mentioned previously, Ghost Boy started out as a roleplay, which went on for a good chunk of time before we got to the part about Turbo. Some of those previous events played into resurrecting him, and when I wrote the fic, I couldn’t think of a good way to extract him from those events (which were also going to be detailed in my unfinished first WIR fanfic, If It Ain’t Broke). So I kept them in at the time, only to realize years later what I could have done instead. The main thing I got rid of was Fix-It Felix Jr. being unplugged, because literally everyone who read the fic rightfully hated that part, and the confusing-ass Elvira subplot. And yes, that means that King Candy can no longer fire energy spheres out of his hands. What a loss.

Wangst cleanup If you go on the tvtropes page for Ghost Boy, the YMMV section mentions how the amount of crying scenes in the story can be a little exhausting. I didn’t write that entry, but I completely agree with it. On one hand, there’s a lot of emotional moments by virtue of what the story actually is, but on the other, it makes the story drag and your sympathy for the characters wears thin after a while. Hell, this even turned at least one person off the fic completely, as mentioned in a tvtropes review that was removed a while ago. So I did my best to emphasize that the characters are feeling strong emotions, but also expressing this in ways besides crying (Vanellope getting angry with Turbo when he accuses her of lying, Turbo essentially going into shock after the Rainbow Bridge confrontation, Turbo screaming at Ralph after hearing the whole story, etc.). A lot of this also comes from Vanellope being less of a Helpless Child(TM).

Scene swaps/removals

These mostly came about when, over the years, I suddenly realized that there was a more effective and/or interesting way to get across a certain point than what I’d actually written in the original fic. Writing the revised version, I finally had a chance to use these ideas:

Most prominently, the prologue (originally a flash-forward to Turbo learning the truth via watching a race video, because I just couldn’t wait to write that scene) is now completely different and much shorter.

Similarly, Turbo’s first nightmare is not a straight-up written version of the Turbo Reveal scene from the film, and instead consists of King Candy harassing Turbo from a mirror -- based on a pre-movie oneshot I wrote in which the exact opposite thing happened. 

I also repurposed an old oneshot that nobody remembers in the scene where Vanellope takes Turbo to Diet Cola Mountain; that scene started out as a pretty pointless close call with some Sugar Rush racers, but I decided that it would be a good opportunity to set up some foreshadowing without everything being in a dream.

Ironically, the Turbo reveal scene, which appeared a grand total of three times in the original Ghost Boy (it’s almost like that’s my favorite scene or something) only appears once, as a dream sequence in chapter 10, replacing the wangstier one where Turbo dreams of flying into boiling diet cola.

The scene in the viewing room where Turbo watches the reveal scene was scrapped in favor of an argument with Vanellope (as part of the Give Vanny More Agency 2k17 initiative).

Almost all of chapter 13 was rewritten for characterization and wangst-purging purposes.

There are other, minor edits that don’t exactly replace entire scenes, but change the flow of the story overall, such as: the “I’m a monster” motif being taken out because it’s a cliche (Frozen was what really killed this for me); Vanellope standing up to King Candy in chapter 15; the family discussion in that same chapter taking place in the forest; and Vanellope and Turbo activating the beacon themselves in chapter 17, rather than asking the adults to do it.

OTHER ALTERATIONS

Writing style Somehow, my years of writing practice have resulted in my developing a very wordy prose style. (I think I just like to show off my vocabulary. I honestly cannot emphasize enough how similar I am to Turbo.) I didn’t completely fix this in the new Ghost Boy because 1) it’s not necessarily always a bad thing, 2) it would have required a full rewrite, and 3) this is something that I’ve only just now started to address in my most recent works. However, I did take the liberty of going back and rephrasing awkwardly worded sections, giving you that smooth and silky reading experience that you so obviously crave.

Edits for canonical accuracy This was just addressing minor errors, such as mistakes in the way I described Sugar Rush’s architecture, as well as straightening out the timeline of what got plugged in and when. For the curious:

Turbo Time -- plugged in 1981, unplugged 1987 (based on Rally-X, its obvious design inspiration)

Fix-It Felix Jr. -- plugged in 1982 (based on the movie)

Tapper -- plugged in 1984 (based on the original Tapper rather than the Root Beer Tapper clone, because if you look at the design, the one in WIR is pretty clearly the alcoholic version no matter how much Disney tries to convince you otherwise)

RoadBlasters -- plugged in 1987, unplugged shortly afterwards (based on its actual release date)

Sugar Rush -- plugged in 1997 (based on the bonus commercial created to promote the movie)

The events of WIR take place in November 2012 (1982 + 30 years). Ghost Boy takes place slightly over a year later, in November/December of 2013; Turbo’s reset day is November 20, and the fic ends around December 14-15. (I didn’t even realize it took place right around Christmas until I sat down and hashed this out.)

I think that’s pretty much everything. On the off chance that you have any questions, you can of course feel free to ask. Anyway, I had a blast with the new Ghost Boy and I’m quite happy with how it turned out!